The Articulatory Basis of the Alphabet

The origin of the alphabet has long been a subject for research, speculation and myths. How to explain its survival and effectiveness over thousands of years? One approach is in terms of the practical problems faced by the originator of the alphabet: another would examine the archaeological record; a third might focus on the perceptual process by which the alphabet makes rapid reading possible. It is proposed that the alphabet originated in an intellectual sequence similar to that followed by Alexander Bell and Henry Sweet in constructing their Visible and Organic Alphabets.The originator of the alphabet used the same kind of introspective analysis of his own speech sounds and of the manner in which they were articulated. This was the vital step. The next step was to represent the articulatory differences in terms of visual patterns. One way to understand what might have been involved is to attempt to replicate the process oneself

THE CHILD AND THE WORLD: How Children acquire Language

HOW CHILDREN ACQUIRE LANGUAGE Over the last few decades research into child language acquisition has been revolutionized by the use of ingenious new techniques which allow one to investigate what in fact infants (that is children not yet able to speak) can perceive when exposed to a stream of speech sound, the discriminations they can make between different speech sounds, differentspeech sound sequences and different words. However on the central features of the mystery, the extraordinarily rapid acquisition of lexicon and complex syntactic structures, little solid progress has been made. The questions being researched are how infants acquire and produce the speech sounds (phonemes) of the community language; how infants find words in the stream of speech; and how they link words to perceived objects or action, that is, discover meanings. In a recent general review in Nature of children's language acquisition, Patricia Kuhl also asked why we do not learn new languages as easily at 50 as at 5 and why computers have not cracked the human linguistic code. The motor theory of language function and origin makes possible a plausible account of child language acquisition generally from which answers can be derived also to these further questions. Why computers so far have been unable to 'crack' the language problem becomes apparent in the light of the motor theory account: computers can have no natural relation between words and their meanings; they have no conceptual store to which the network of words is linked nor do they have the innate aspects of language functioning - represented by function words; computers have no direct links between speech sounds and movement patterns and they do not have the instantly integrated neural patterning underlying thought - they necessarily operate serially and hierarchically. Adults find the acquisition of a new language much more difficult than children do because they are already neurally committed to the link between the words of their first language and the elements in their conceptual store. A second language being acquired by an adult is in direct competition for neural space with the network structures established for the first language

Factors influencing the downstream transport of sediment in the Lough Feeagh catchment, Burrishoole, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Research laboratories in the Burrishoole catchment have been the focus of salmonid research since 1955. One aspect of the research has been to monitor the number of salmon and sea trout migrating to sea as smolts and returning to the catchment as adults. In the early 1990s it became clear that the smolt output from the catchment had declined over the previous two decades. At about the same time the presence of fine particles of peat silt in the hatchery became increasingly apparent and led to a higher incidence of mortality of young fry. These observations and management difficulties led to a study of silt transport in the surface waters of the catchment, which is described in this article. The authors describe geology, soils, climate and hydrology of Burrishoole before examining the sediment deposition in Lough Feeagh

Palaeoenvironments of the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: An analysis of archaeological charcoal

PhD - ScienceAnalysis of charcoal from Middle Stone Age layers at Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, shows evidence of environmental change during the Last Glacial. Layers analysed encompass the end of the cold stadial, Oxygen Isotope Stage (OIS) 4, and the warmer interstadial, OIS 3. Layers are divided – on the basis of lithic industry associations and taxonomic content – into the Howiesons Poort (HP) (dated to ca. 61 000 years ago), and the early, middle and late post-HP assemblages (ca. 60-55 000, 55-50 000 and 50-33 000 years ago respectively). This project aims to identify evidence for environmental change, characterise this change using qualitative and quantitative analyses, and compare the results to evidence from other proxies at Sibudu Cave and elsewhere in South Africa. HP layers (GS, GR, GR2) are dominated by evergreen forest taxa, including Podocarpus spp., Buxus sp., Brachylaena sp., Sapium/Spirostachys and Ptaeroxylon obliquum. Kirkia sp. suggests a warm, woodland savanna habitat grew beyond the forest vegetation. Early post-HP layers (Eb, SPCA, BSp) contain taxa from evergreen, riverine forest communities, including Erica spp., Leucosidea sericea, and Rapanea melanophloeos. Some of the taxa in these layers suggest a shift in vegetation, possibly related to the marine regression of the Last Glacial, bringing taxa currently found further inland towards the site. Fewer evergreen forest components, and more bushveld taxa, are present in the middle post-HP (RSp, OMOD, MOD) than in the previous layers. Some of the taxa are only found in northern South Africa in regions that are significantly drier than modern KwaZulu-Natal. These layers also contain more Acacia spp. and other Fabaceae taxa and fewer Erica spp. than the samples from the early post-HP. This may be a result of environmental change, a change in wood selection, charcoal fragmentation, or sampling bias. Layer Bu, within the late post-HP, contains evergreen and deciduous taxa many of which are found in KwaZulu-Natal today. Kirkia sp. again provides evidence for a dry habitat not iv currently found in the region. Many Types were defined in Bu, which may indicate a vegetation community for which there is currently no reference material. Temperature and moisture indices produced using the Factor Analysis suggest warm and moist conditions during the HP layers. During the early post-HP conditions became cooler with intermediate moisture levels. Subsequently, conditions were warm and dry (middle post-HP) and then warm with a little more moisture indicated (late post-HP). Good fuelwoods were routinely collected during the post-HP. In contrast, the HP layers are dominated by Podocarpus spp. and many of the good fuelwoods, such as Acacia spp. and Erica spp., are absent. This pattern may be a result of changes in the environment, sample bias or a development of awareness of wood properties between the HP and post-HP occupations. The charcoal results corroborate palaeoenvironmental interpretations provided by seeds and macrofauna from Sibudu Cave. When the Sibudu Cave data are combined with data from other sites it is apparent that, although conditions in the summer rainfall region during the Last Glacial were generally dry, there is evidence for localised variation in vegetation and climate

PET imaging of steroid hormone receptor expression

Steroid hormone receptor (SHR) expression and changes in SHR expression compared to basal levels, whether upregulated, down-regulated, or mutated, form a distinguishing feature of some breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers. These receptors act to induce tumor proliferation. In the imaging context, total expression together with modulation of expression can yield predictive and prognostic information. Currently, biopsy for histologic assessment of SHR expression is routine for breast and prostate cancer; however, the technique is not well suited to the heterogeneous tumor environment and can lead to incorrect receptor expression assignment, which precludes effective treatment. The development of positron emission tomography (PET) radioligands to image receptor expression may overcome the difficulties associated with tumor heterogeneity and facilitate the assessment of metastatic disease

Diatom inferred aquatic impacts of the mid-Holocene eruption of Mount Mazama, Oregon

High-resolution diatom stratigraphies from mid-Holocene sediments taken from fringe and central locations in Moss Lake, a small lake in the foothills of the Cascade Range, Washington, have been analysed to investigate the impacts (and duration) of tephra deposition on the aquatic ecosystem. Up to 50 mm of tephra was deposited from the climactic eruption of Mount Mazama 7958-7795 cal yr BP, with coincident changes in the aquatic ecosystem. The diatom response from both cores indicates a change in habitat type following blanket tephra deposition, with a decline in tychoplanktonic Fragilaria brevistriata and Staurosira venter and epiphytic diatom taxa indicating a reduction in aquatic macrophyte abundance. Additionally, the central core shows an increase in tychoplanktonic Aulacoseira taxa, interpreted as a response to increased silica availability following tephra deposition. However, partial redundancy analysis provides only limited evidence of direct effects from the tephra deposition, and only from the central core, but significant effects from underlying environmental changes associated with climatic and lake development processes. The analyses highlight the importance of duplicate analyses (fringe and central cores) and vigorous statistical analyses for the robust evaluation of aquatic ecosystem change